I find it odd that so little seems to be known, or at least written,
about John McCarthy - the John McCarthy of 27 Dorset Street, that is. I
would have imagined that, at the time, he should have been regarded with
considerable suspicion by the police in the murder of Mary Kelly, but all
that appears to be left of any police interviews is a short (very short)
statement now held at the Greater London Records Office, along with his
deposition to the Inquest, which is hardly longer. To learn more about
the lesser characters in this case, I feel, is just as important, or at
least as interesting, as the backgrounds to the victims, for instance -
of which an immense amount has been discovered in recent years.

I began to find out a little about McCarthy when I had an interesting
idea regarding Mary Kelly. The only part of her background that is indisputably
backed up by witness statement is that during 1885/6 she was living with
a Mrs 'Carthy' in Breezer's Hill. This is still the eighty-metre stretch
of street it was then, and leads uphill from Pennington Street to The Highway,
which in 1885 was called St George Street, just north of the London Docks
North Quay. In 1891 there were still just four houses in this street, and
at No 1 lived John and Mary McCarthy. I could hardly credit the coincidence
that in 1885 there lived in one of those four houses a Mrs 'Carthy', while
just six years later there lived a Mrs McCarthy, and came to the conclusion
that the press had misquoted her name in their reports after the murder
of Mary Kelly. Carthy is an extremely rare name - there is not even one
listed in the current Central London Phone Book, and the only one listed
in the Post Office Street Directory for 1885 is William Carthy newsagent,
32a Mile End Road.

It was Mrs Elizabeth Phoenix (living at 157 Bow Common Lane in 1888)
who told the police that she believed the Mary Kelly who had been murdered
was the same woman who had lived at her brother-in-law's house in Breezer's
Hill during 1895/ 6. Mary would have been about 22 the year she stayed
in Breezer's Hill, and Mary McCarthy just a year older. We know Kelly was
said to be 'tall and pretty, and as fair as a lily' (from Elizabeth Prater,
and others who commented on her looks), so I took it a step further. What,
I thought, if the reason she left Breezer's Hill was not because, according
to Mrs 'Carthy', she went to live with a man who was apparently in the
building trade and, she believed, would have married her (this, presumably,
being Joe Fleming), but because she was actually carrying on an affair
with Mary's husband, John, who was 30 the year Mary Kelly was living with
them. An affair that was simply getting out of hand? Might Mary McCarthy
have found out and demanded that Mary Kelly leave?

Nothing to show one way or the other. So be it. But then comes the very
strange coincidence that three years later, there is Mary Kelly living
in Miller's Court and paying rent to - yes, a John McCarthy. Could this
be the same McCarthy? If so, it could provide a very rational reason for
the amount of arrears in rent that she had been allowed to build up for
her Miller's Court abode in 1888. At a time when many other women could
not get lodgings for a single night if they didn't have the necessary fourpence,
here was Mary Kelly owing more than six weeks rent. Was this for 'old times
sake', I asked myself. Was something possibly still continuing? It seemed
a very logical solution to a question that has puzzled experts on this
case for many years.

Further research was needed, but as fate would have it, I swiftly disproved
my idea - sad to say, they were not the same John McCarthy! But my continuing
research threw up the curious fact that in 1891, living at 157 Bow Common
Lane (Elizabeth Phoenix's 1888 address) there was a certain Eugene McCarthy,
31, a cooper, which makes a possibility of another connection between Elizabeth
Phoenix and the house at No 1 Breezer's Hill. More research may find a
link between Eugene and John McCarthy, but I also began to find out a little
bit more about the Dorset Street McCarthy.

Born in 1851 in France, though a British subject, he appears to have
been a stable family man. Living in the same house for more than ten years
(possibly longer), he provided lodgings for his brother, Daniel, (a competing
grocer with premises down the road at No 35 Dorset Street), and his wife,
Ann; and for another relation, also called John, and his wife, Mary along
with their son George. He outlived his only wife, Elizabeth, by twenty
years, dying on 16th June 1934 at 83 years of age, and was buried beside
her at St Patrick's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone.

He must certainly have witnessed some great changes in the East End
during the years between the Whitechapel Murders and his death. John and
Elizabeth had four children by the beginning of the 1890's (all daughters:
Margaret, Elizabeth, Ann and Nelly) - and maybe more after that. Further
research may reveal the answer to that last possibility, but I doubt that
it will bring us any closer to discovering why John McCarthy allowed Mary
Kelly to build up 29/- in back rent by the time of her death.